Properties vs. Values

Look at the help for Get-CimInstance. The -ComputerName parameter accepts objects of the type String. It says so, right in the help! But a Selected ADComputer object isn’t the same thing as a String. The Name property you selected contains strings, but it isn’t a string itself. This is a huge distinction, and one that trips people up all the time.

Think about a fax machine. Do you remember those? They accept pages, and transmit those pages. Now suppose you have an envelope full of pages. You can’t just shove the envelope into the fax machine and expect good results. In that analogy, the envelope is a property, and the pages inside it are values. To get the pages into the fax machine, you have to take them out of the envelope first.

See the difference? -ExpandProperty gets just the contents of the specified property, rather than returning an object that only has that property. Want a simple way to test this in the shell? Run these commands: